His grandmother just stares at him as if she doesn't know him. Ephram stands.
"Can I go?"

"You're grounded, young man," she tells him, but it's feeble and weak.

Ephram gets up to leave. He almost says, "my father never grounded me." He
goes to the room in their house they've designated 'his', and climbs out the
window.

~

"What are you doing here, Ephram?" Amy says.

Ephram looks at her.

"I mean," and she swallows. "I thought." She opens the door a little wider.
"I don't know what I'm saying. Do you want to come in?"

He looks at her, some more, thinking. "I don't know," he says. "Because if
I come in, I might see your brother, and that can't go well." He tries to
make it funny, like if they just joke about Brite it'll make things easier.

"he's--"

"I, do you want to go get something to eat?" Ephram asks her, suddenly, quickly,
to stem the flow from her mouth. "I brought money," and he holds up his wallet.
"I'll buy. Anything under five bucks is yours."

"Okay," Amy says softly. She closes the door behind her, and doesn't lock
it. Ephram's face crumples for a minute, seeing that. She didn't lock the
door. She didn't have to lock the door. The next moment he's fine. "let's
go get a hamburger or something."

~

Delia will be fine.

He tells himself that she'll be fine as he climbs out his window. Delia is
a sweet child, but she seemed to weather things all right, and she's responding
to the treatment of the city and her family. Treatment, as if they were sick
or something.

Ephram throws his bag out to the fire escape. He flags down a taxi, goes
straight to the bus depot. The ticket agent asks him questions, like they
suspect he's a runaway, but he starts talking about the friends he made in
Everwood, the town itself like he's lived there before and is only going back
for a visit. It calms everyone down. When they ask him what he was doing there
before, Ephram freezes, but only for a moment.

Later, on the bus, he has no idea what he said there, only that it wasn't
at all the truth.

~

Amy finally gets the courage to ask him after they're almost done the burgers.
Ephram eats maybe half of his. Normally it might be rude, but he wouldn't
be here talking to her if he didn't have a reason. Amy figures she might as
well ask. "What are you doing here?" she says.

"for a long time, before," Ephram says to her, "I tried to. I don't even
know." He stares down at his plate. "But it's like, we left and that means
that the year here was pointless. And obviously there was a lot of point to
it, I mean." Ephram dips a fry into the ketchup on his plate. "We both."

Amy is trying not to cry. Ephram finally shrugs. "My dad came here to grieve,"
he tells her, as if that makes it logical for him to do the same.

~

No one picks him up from the bus station. He almost calls his grandparents
to come and pick him up, because he thinks about how worried they're going
to be. But he doesn't. Ephram gets on that bus and doesn't tell them. He doesn't
think they'd get it.

~

"Are you mad at him?" Amy whispers over pie.

During the course of the meal, a few of the other residents came over to
say hello to him, to say exactly the wrong thing. Amy replied to them all
with "he just came to visit us for a little while."

Ephram blinks. "Mad?" He fiddles with his pie. "Of course I'm mad at him."
Puts his fork down with a soft clatter. "He voluntarily left us. He decided
that he couldn't handle it and gave up."

"Fat lot of good that did," Ephram answers. He blinks. "I'm sorry," he says
to her. "I just."

Amy doesn't answer. Ephram pays their bill.

~

He packs three things into his duffle bag: One. His discman. Two. a change
of clothes. Three. Two packets of sleeping pills.

He doesn't really intend to take them, in fact, he bought them almost six
months ago. But they were expensive and so he's never thrown them out, and
besides, keeping them means that he can look at them and say, "i'm not taking
these."

Ephram takes them out on the bus a lot.

~

"Do you have anywhere to stay?" Amy asks him. Ephram walked her home. "I
can ask, if you want."

"Thanks, I." He rubs his head, his cheeks, fiercely. "I guess I kind of got
used to having a house here."

"Do you need to call anyone?" and she gestures him inside. Ephram follows
only reluctantly. "Your grandparents, so they know you got here all right?"

Ephram adds, "It's summer vacation," and cracks a smile. "I'm not missing
anything at home." He waited three weeks, until after the service, and school's
out. "I mean, I tried to get them to hold the service here, but they wouldn't."
He shrugs. "So I waited till after it to come."

"Oh," Amy repeats.

"Sorry," Ephram says, but he's not sure for what or why.

~

The bus ride from New York to Colorado is hot and stuffy and takes almost
two days to get there. It costs one hundred and fifty dollars, one way.

Ephram has in his bank account enough to cover the fare. His father, of course,
left him money.

~

"How was Colin's--"

Amy hands him a plate to put down. Her father, surprisingly, was the one
who said he could stay overnight. "Nice." She places forks and knives down,
carefully, one by one. "It was cold."

"I really wanted to come."

"I know," she says. Softer, "he would have wanted you to come, I think."

As they pull into the mountains, into very familiar peaks, Ephram doesn't
feel any better, not any better at all. He thought that maybe the mountains
would somehow heal him. that maybe he could find a little peace of mind here,
the kind that he couldn't seem to get in New York City, even with Delia and
his grandparents and everything he'd been missing for the past year.

It isn't as easy as moving somewhere with mountains, Ephram knows this. He's
been here before.